Really? A contract even if you pay full price (unsubsidized)? I would call (AT&T) again to confirm. The point of having an unsubsidized phone is so you dont have a contact. Perhaps some stores don't want to sell an unsubsidized phone or the sales agents don't know how to process such a request.

Originally, I thought about an iTouch vs an iPhone. But, for the cost, it was cheaper to buy the iPhone instead w/contract. I can't wait for 2009 to see what the competition will bring out to compete with the iPhone. Samsung Oneia is one to keep your eyes out for as well as some new ones with Nokia.

But AT&T and likely everyone else will still suffer growing pains with problems on the 3G network like slow speeds and dropped calls.

You can still get the older model iphone unsubsidized if you can find one, but I guess that Apple/ATT did not want people jailbreaking the 3g phones, and so they mandated a contract. eBay has a ton of 3G phones available, but if you notice a LARGE majority of them are from over seas. The rest are perhaps back alley or "lost stock" phones.

I was seriously considering selling my iPhone a few months ago on Ebay. I just received a brand new replacement (non refurb) because of cracks in the case (mould/injection/design flaw). Now would be a good time to buy or sell, but I wouldn't trust an iPhone 3G from overseas. However, the 2G ones are still really good and now are fully unlockable.

I guess I'll be keeping my iPhone. I have to keep on telling myself and justify why I bought it in the first place, for Wifi when travelling. As a matter of fact, I just cancelled my data plan because I couldnt stand the erratic speeds on the 3G network. Still, the iPhone is not robust or fast enough to replace even the Asus Eee PC as I have experienced recently while on my trip to Vegas. I still need an actually PC for VOIP and skype calls. I'm not happy with "Fringe" for the iPhone.

BTW, I loved the dual receiver setup of XM/Sirius in the rental car that I rented while in Vegas.

Just an update. I was recently made aware that AT&T does have a cap with their iPhone data plans but to date, they have not been enforcing it. This may be a different story if they feel their network is suffering due to high bandwidth/data usage.

Here is the entire article. Will this stimulate Sirius/XM subscriptions? Hmm.

Rogue Amoeba has just released a public preview of their new desktop player for XM and Sirius called Pulsar. It provides instant access to either service, or both, and since the recent merger of the services they are pretty similar anyway.

The application does not require a browser and can just sit on your desktop pumping out that Sat-Rad love.

There is a free public preview that plays for 20 minutes and then overlays noise on the audio. If you ever bought a product from Rogue Amoeba, they will let you download a fully working app for free. If you haven't, you can get a license key for 15 dollars. The app is not a 1.0 version yet, but seems to work from most reports posted to the web. I tried it myself on both XM and Sirius. At first, it failed with some XML parsing errors, so I shut it down and tried later, and it worked just fine.

It should be noted that there are some other ways to listen besides buying an app or listening through your browser. One promising solution is the donation-ware app called StarLightXM. The software requires a streaming plug-in, so check the documentation. StarLightXM works on both satellite services. I tried a new build which came out yesterday and it worked fine. Beta 6 of the player can be found here.

Of course for any of these solutions to work, you'll need an online subscription to satellite radio. Both services will let you try their online offerings for 3 days for free, and both Sirius and XM have hinted they may be creating their own players, including one for the iPhone, but so far nothing has appeared. The developers who did the StarLightXM desktop app also say they are going to have an XM/Sirius player for the iPhone/iPod touch soon.